As John Lott has so effectively demonstrated time and time again, widespread citizen gun possession is an effective way of increasing public safety. His policy suggestions have never been more relevant than in today’s world where the military has disarmed its troops exposing them to the horrors recently experienced in Camp Hood, where U.S. ships remain far too exposed to pirate attacks.
Yet, an article in the Washington Times today quotes Roger Middleton, a piracy specialist at the London-based Chatham House: “the international community was still ‘solidly against’ armed guards aboard vessels at sea” and goes on to note that “American ships have taken a different line from the rest of the international community.” Remember when Ross Perot sent his own team to Iran to rescue his employees. Americans aren’t immune to self-defense and rarely are as concerned as the “international community” about the root causes that have driven these poor individuals to resort to piracy.
Perhaps, America hasn’t gone quite as crazy as we think.
Piracy has flourished in the crucial shipping lanes off the coast of Somalia partly due to a treaty that the U.S. has not ratified yet — but which is often described as “customary international law” binding on all nations. Partly as a result of the LOST Treaty, billions of dollars worth of cargo, and human lives, have been lost due to piracy. Harold Koh, nominated by Obama to be the State Department’s chief lawyer, argues that “customary international law” like LOST is binding on the U.S., even when it is reflected in treaties that the U.S. has refused to sign. (European human-rights conventions and an indecisive White House also play a big role in thwarting action against the pirates).
That’s just one reason U.S. policymakers should think twice before following vague “international norms.”
Since customary international law is vague, liberal lawyers invariably use that ambiguity to claim that it dictates a host of controversial requirements that few countries would voluntarily adopt on their own, like banning Mother’s Day as sexist, and mandating quota-based affirmative action. For example, the CEDAW equal-rights treaty has been construed by an international committee as requiring “redistribution of wealth,” “affirmative action,” “gender studies” in academia, government-sponsored “access to rapid and easy abortion,” “comparable worth,” and “the application of quotas and numerical goals and measurable targets aimed at increasing women’s political participation.”
But they only adopt expansive interpretations of international law when it is ideologically convenient. When looking to foreign court rulings or international law would actually result in a conservative outcome, they cheerfully ignore international law or pretend it doesn’t exist. A classic example of that is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who claims that the Supreme Court should pay more attention to foreign court rulings, but ignores those rulings when they contradict her political preferences, even in those atypical cases where foreign court rulings actually deserve to be given careful consideration (like when they are interpreting a commercial treaty that also applies in the U.S.).
People who claim to care about foreign court rulings or “international law” cheerfully ignore them when they result in “conservative” outcomes, like limiting taxation or punitive damages against businesses.
The celebrations and congratulations over the U.S. Navy’s rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips are well deserved and proper all around. Yet even after the jubilation has quieted down, piracy in the high seas remains a threat to global trade. That’s important for the U.S. Senate to keep in mind when it again considers the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which, as The Wall Street Journal‘s Bret Stephens noted last November, could present some potential obstacles to American naval action against pirates. I wrote an earlier post about this, but this point is worth repeating:
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Such an approach could only result in wholesale hostage taking. Capt. Phillips’s ordeal has made the danger that would entail. President Obama’s decision to use deadly force was the right one. Neither he nor his predecessors should be constrained in similar situations in the future.
Ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) would mean a loss of sovereignty and burdensome extraterritorial regulation of U.S. extractive industries. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens provides yet another reason to avoid ratifying the treaty, in light of the recent surge in hijackings by Somali pirates.
Article 110 of the U.N.’s Law of the Sea Convention — ratified by most nations, but not by the U.S. — enjoins naval ships from simply firing on suspected pirates. Instead, they are required first to send over a boarding party to inquire of the pirates whether they are, in fact, pirates.
Silly as this is, at least it would work in its intended purpose — when a boarding party is taken hostage and doesn’t come back! For the boarding party’s late members, however, LOST may need a provision similar to whatever honors the Star Federation accords to red-shirted Enterprise crew members.
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